Who you calling Fuddy Duddy?

Over the past month I have been participating in Talkin' Tuesdays with a bunch of other quilty folk over on Twitter.  It is hard to describe, but it feels like being in a large gymnasium with about 30 other people, trying to carry on multiple conversations, with everybody talking at once.  It happens very fast, with topics changing quickly, and often with no good idea of who you are talking to.  It's a bit of a madhouse, quite frankly, but oodles of fun.  Cara moderates it, and she always has several questions for folks to respond to. One question, a few weeks ago, had to do with quilting trends and how they influence what we do and what we like.  Most of us like to think we are immune to trends, but probably we aren't.  Our current fascination with bright, saturated colours is a trend, isn't it?  Through the madness of the conversation, we debated whether anything could be done to rehabilitate the colours burgundy, brown and dark green; these appear to be the most shunned colours among modern quilters today - I regularly see Flickr posts where people are listing their likes and don't likes, and these colours are often mentioned in the latter.
Because I experience senior moments on a regular schedule, I don't recall everyone who was part of that particular conversation.  But in her inimitable fashion, Cheryl offered it up as the Fuddy is Not Duddy Challenge, and Barb, Thomas, Susanne and I took up the gauntlet.  The specs of the challenge are to create a doll quilt using green, burgundy and brown and only one neutral of our choice, by Canadian Thanksgiving, which is October 10.  The goal is to create a piece that uses these colours, but still looks modern and exciting.

The doll quilt size means I don't have to invest much money in new fabric for this challenge.  I pulled the fabrics in these photos out of my stash, just as a first look at what I already have.  The burgundy is a piece I bought back in the late 80s or early 90s - I love it, but have never known what to do with it.  The three fabrics at the bottom of the photo just above also date from the same period.  The shadow makes the one on the left look blue, but it is mainly green.  A couple of more yellow-toned options appear in the photo below.  And in both photos you can see a great fat 1/8 bundle of Japanese dobby fabrics that would fit right in.

I'm looking forward to coming up with something interesting, although, to be fair, I think I am a bit of a fuddy duddy by nature.  Or perhaps it is more accurate to simply say that I have a wide appreciation of aesthetic styles when it comes to quilts.  It's going to be great to make a place at the table for green, burgundy and brown!  Want to play?  Cheryl is going to create a Flickr group for our creations soon - I will keep you posted!